Stocks ended trading in the black on ‘Freaky Friday,’ despite losing most of the gains made in an early-morning surge.
Friday saw one of the market’s four “triple-witching” sessions — when contracts for stock
index futures, stock index options and stock options expire simultaneously — occurring
every year (the third Friday of March, June, September and December). Investors often refer
to these sessions as “Freaky Friday.”
The Dow Jones rose 38.9, or 0.4%, to 10416 after climbing as high as 10436 by 10:30 a.m. The
Nasdaq gained 3 points, or 0.15%, to 1987 after touching 2000 in the mid-morning. The S&P
500 climbed 3 points to 1135, a increase of 0.3%.
Tech stocks were the most actively traded in Friday’s session, led by software giant
Microsoft , which gained 58 cents, or 2.1%, to $28.35 on volume of 133
million shares.
Router maker Cisco Systems inched up 6 cents, or 0.3%, to $23.42 on
volume of 72 million shares. On Thursday Cisco announced it was buying telecommunications
company Procket Networks for $89 million. Procket makes high-end routers.
Red Hat plunged 2.29, or 10.2%, to $20.10 as investors reacted to the
Linux software firm’s failure Thursday to meet revenue forecasts for the previous quarter.
Earlier this week the company announced it was losing its chief financial officer.
Publishing software maker Adobe Systems fell $1.88, or 4.2%, to $42.73
after reporting profits and revenue for the second fiscal quarter that were below Q1’s
numbers.
Solectron soared up 64 cents, or 12.6%, to $5.72 after beating estimates
for the third quarter. The provider of electronics manufacturing and integrated supply chain
services reported Q3 sales of $3 billion.
A initial public offering was well-received Friday as educational enterprise software
company Blackboard finished at $20.01, 43% above its offering price of
$14 per share.
